Critiques and suggestions are unbiased and merchandise are independently chosen. Postmedia might earn an affiliate fee from purchases made by hyperlinks on this web page.
Article content material
It’s not usually {that a} opera firm can drop trendy pop-culture references into its promotional materials.
However a part of the advertising behind Calgary Opera’s last manufacturing of the season, Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold, contains nerdy references to Sport of Thrones, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and video video games akin to The Elder Scrolls, V: Skyrim, Max Payne, and Too Human. It’s nearly as if the venerable, 50-year-old firm was teaming up with Calgary Expo.
Commercial 2
Article content material
Article content material
Wagner’s epic juggernaut was first carried out in 1869, so Calgary Opera is clearly updating the piece for a contemporary viewers. However even with out the particular results, projections and futuristic setting, Wagner’s narrative appears custom-built for the fan-convention crowd.
“That is the right opera for anyone who has by no means been to an opera,” says director Brian Staufenbiel. “It has gods, it has giants, it has a demigod, it has a dragon, it has dwarves. It doesn’t get any higher. It’s proper out of all these widespread sequence and tales that persons are into proper now.”
That is the fifth time Staufenbiel has staged this manufacturing of Das Rheingold, having been on the helm for performances in Minnesota, Arizona, Montreal and Seattle. Because the inventive director of San Francisco’s Opera Parallele, he makes a speciality of multimedia and interdisciplinary productions. However whereas the opera could also be 155 years outdated — it’s additionally the primary of Wagner’s epic four-part Der Ring Des Nebelungen — not each opera firm is supplied to placed on the manufacturing, which Staufenbiel cheerfully calls “a beast.” In truth, that is the primary time Calgary Opera has carried out the behemoth manufacturing, which opens April 20 on the Jubilee Auditorium.
Midday Information Roundup
Article content material
Commercial 3
Article content material
It’s distinctive staging will embrace having the 77 musicians from the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra on stage on the Jubilee Auditorium with the manufacturing’s conductor, Calgary Opera creative director Jonathan Brandani. It’s the largest orchestra within the firm’s historical past with much more musicians than would have match within the Jubilee’s orchestra pit. So they’re on stage and far of the motion takes place on a bridge that goes over the orchestra. This enables the pit to be utilized in an imaginative means as a part of the set representing Rhine and the underworld of Nibelheim. All of it provides an immersive and intimate expertise for the viewers. Intimate, in fact, isn’t the primary phrase that springs to thoughts when describing the thundering work of Wagner. A part of the composer’s aesthetic was to make use of the orchestra as a “character” within the manufacturing and have them embedded within the set, Staufenbiel says. This additionally frees up the orchestra pit. Within the first scene, it’s crammed with fog and projections, making it appear like persons are swimming within the pit. Later, it turns into a part of the underworld of Nibelheim, the place it resembles an underground cave.
Commercial 4
Article content material
“Essentially the most extraordinary factor that it permits the Wagnerian singers to be nearly within the corridor,” Staufenbiel says. “They’re proper on the sting, the viewers is actually two ft away at instances. They’re down there singing and only a stone’s throw away. That’s a form of intimacy that we normally don’t get in Wagner. Normally it looks like there’s an enormous pit, persons are means up stage and much away.”
The projections, gentle and different particular results additionally assist give the manufacturing a futuristic, sci-fi vibe. When growing the piece, Staufenbiel determined to set Wagner’s tackle Norse mythology within the technological period. In his notes for the Seattle manufacturing, he wroteit is about “in a future the place science and know-how have caught up with nature, the place the natural, the mechanical, and the digital have began to fuse. Certainly, the excellence between organic processes and industrial artifice has nearly ceased to exist. Gods are half human, half machine, and dwarves aspire to reign supreme by mining the know-how of the previous — semiconductors and computer systems.”
So sure, there are giants, dragons, demigods, dwarves and gods that appear extra part of the Star Trek Borg Collective than Valhalla. The story, nevertheless, boils all the way down to a timeless and common story of greed, the ability of affection and the corrupting nature of energy. Within the Rhine, three sisters guard treasured gold. When an formidable dwarf named Alberich seems, he’s instructed that whoever forges the gold into a hoop will achieve energy over the world however should first surrender love. He decides to steal the gold. A lot mayhem ensues.
Commercial 5
Article content material
“Giving every little thing up for energy and dropping your means, that’s a really attention-grabbing theme,” says Staufenbiel. “Shedding your soul to be all highly effective is among the largest messages of this opera for me. It’s folks combating that want to get a style of that form of energy and the way one offers with that’s the bigger allegory of the piece.”
The forged can also be suitably epic and worldwide. British bass-baritone James Rutherford makes his Calgary Opera debut as Wotan, the power-hungry chief of the gods. Israeli baritone Boaz Daniel can also be making his Calgary debut as Alberich. Tenor and Calgary expat Gordon Geitz, who received his begin within the Calgary Opera refrain, will sing the function of Mime, Alberich’s brother. Anna Pompeeva, initially from Ukraine however now residing in Calgary, takes on the function of the goddess of affection, Freia, whereas People Kenneth Kellog and Jill Grove play the roles of Fafner, a large, and Fricka, the virtuous spouse of Wotan.
Staufenbiel says the forged is a mixture of these acquainted with the opera akin to Rutherford, who has performed the function earlier than and in addition received the 2006 Seattle Opera Worldwide Wagner Competitors, and others who’re newcomers to Das Rheingold. Equally, Staufenbiel says the opera ought to enchantment to each opera aficionados and newbies to the medium. Formidable, multi-disciplinary and technically dazzling productions akin to Das Rheingold are a part of the continued evolution of opera, he says.
“I believe we’re seeing within the trade much more acceptance and even want to have know-how assist us inform the story that’s on stage,” he says. “With all these immersive issues which are occurring, persons are anticipating it increasingly and revel in seeing house that basically involves life.”
Calgary Opera’s Das Rheingold shall be carried out on April 20, 24 and 26 on the Jubilee Auditorium. Go to calgaryopera.com.
Article content material
